The Two-Hundred-Ninety-First (A Supper)

When I say that these studies are as much for me as they are for you, I’m not being coy.  This week’s study is a perfect example of what I mean!  I started it thinking I was going to show through scripture what I believed for a long time, but ended up realizing that what I believed was wrong.

There’s a reason I haven’t professed this belief widely or written on it previously.  It was something I believed, but hadn’t had a chance to sit down and study until this week.  We’re going to go through what scripture actually says about Yeshua’s last meal with His disciples, and what it means for us as believers today.  

First, I should probably let you in on what that belief was.  For the longest time, I believed that what many Christians call the “Last Supper” today was actually Yeshua and the disciples observing the Passover meal.  As you’ve probably come to realize through all the studies we’ve done to this point, I still believe YHWH’s commandments are applicable to believers today, including observing YHWH’s feasts, which includes the Pesach, or Passover.  Now, we have some limitations today for some of these commandments based on the current state of things in the Promised Land, but I believe the heart of the commandments, and the intention of YHWH, is that we do our best to observe them given those limitations.

I’m not the only one that has believed the Last Supper was a Passover meal, and it’s still a debated topic today.  This is understandable given the fact that much of the language in the gospels suggests that it was.  All of the gospels record Yeshua being in Jerusalem during this time, which was not necessarily a requirement for the Passover meal itself but certainly was required for the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 23:14-17).  It is one of three feasts that required all males to appear before YHWH in Jerusalem.

Since the Passover meal is the first meal eaten on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (which started at evening), and the first day of Unleavened Bread is a day of holy convocation where no regular work is to be done (Exodus 12:16), the Israelite males would already be in Jerusalem at a minimum of the day prior.  In fact, because Passover and Unleavened Bread were so closely intertwined, they became synonymous in every day conversation.  Sometimes, rather than mention Passover and Unleavened Bread, they would just say Passover, or just say Unleavened Bread.  For the listener or reader to understand if the Passover meal or Unleavened Bread is being talked about it took understanding the context of whatever word was used.  You can see this in the gospel accounts.

Getting back to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, given that their Passover lamb was to be inspected on the 10th of Aviv (Exodus 12:3), many even traveled to Jerusalem by that day of the month and went above and beyond the written commandment by having a priest inspect the lamb to make sure it met all the requirements.  I mean, when the threat of your soul being cut off from your people is involved, it was only natural for them to want to make very sure they were doing everything correctly.  This threat was only associated with completely failing to celebrate the Passover (Numbers 9:13) or eating leaven during Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:19), but as with many transitions to a legalistic mindset the addition of requirements, such as having a priest inspect the lamb, is justified in someone’s mind as being better to ensure compliance rather than it gradually moving him or her away from the heart of the commandment.  By the way, as you read those verses you’ll also see that the threat of being cutoff from Israel applied to the sojourner, or non-Israelite, that joined themselves to Israel as well, not just the native-born bloodline descendants of Jacob, who was renamed Israel by YHWH.

The reason we’ve gone all the way back to the 10th of the month while looking at the connection with Yeshua and the disciples being in Jerusalem is because John’s gospel gives us some crucial information regarding that date and Yeshua’s presence in the city.  The Passover meal was eaten at the end of the day, also called the evening, of the 14th of Aviv (Exodus 12:6-8), but according to YHWH’s definition of a day once it transitioned to night the 15th of Aviv had started.  Another “by the way” is that when you read when the Passover lamb was to be slaughtered many translations say “at twilight,” but the Hebrew language used actually means “between the two evenings.”  Understanding this allows us to put the picture of what the typical Israelite’s 14th of Aviv activities looked like.  More on that later.

In John’s gospel, we find that Yeshua and His disciples were in Bethany visiting Lazarus six days before Passover (remember, the Passover meal is at the start of the 15th of Aviv) (John 12:1).  This would place them in Bethany on the 9th of Aviv since the 14th of Aviv is the day before Passover and counting backwards from that day we see that the 9th is the sixth day before Passover.  This may seem innocuous and unimportant, but what do we see happening on the very next day, which was the 10th of Aviv?

On the 10th of Aviv, Yeshua rode into Jerusalem with the crowd shouting “Hosanna” (John 12:12-13), the same day of the month that the Passover lamb was to be inspected for blemishes.  He wasn’t just going into the city to find a room to stay in until Unleavened Bread, in fact with all the people already in the city for the feast there was likely no room for Him and His disciples to stay there anyway.  He was going into the city for the people to inspect Him for blemishes in accordance with Torah.  And based on their reaction to Him, calling Him their King and saying “blessed is He who comes in the name of YHWH,” I would say He was deemed as meeting the standard of being an unblemished lamb.    

Another point some find confusing about these gospel accounts of the events surrounding that Passover is when Yeshua was in Bethany.  We just saw that John talked about Him being there six days before, but in other gospels it seems to suggest He was there two days before, being anointed with expensive perfume (Matthew 26:1-7, Mark 14:1-3).  Is this a contradiction?  Did John get the days mixed up?  Or did Matthew and Mark?

The Hebrew versions of these gospels make this situation a little easier to understand, but you can still see it somewhat in the Greek version as well.  It’s a difference in what the focus is surrounding this event.  Where John’s focus is maintaining the overall timing and sequence of events between the dinner in Bethany where Yeshua is anointed and His entrance into Jerusalem (and this focus is clear based on him stating the date of the meal and then saying “the next day”), Matthew and Mark’s focus is on the connection of His anointing to the desire of the chief priests to kill Yeshua.  Both cover the conspiring right before talking about the anointing, which is when Yeshua rebuked the disciples by talking about Him being buried (a result of the chief priests’ successful conspiracy).

Neither Matthew nor Mark explicitly state that the conspiring of the chief priests and elders happened immediately before the dinner where Yeshua was anointed with perfume.  Mark simply states that this dinner happened while Yeshua was in Bethany, and while Matthew starts that account of events with the Greek word tote (Matthew 26:3), this word does not necessarily mean right after or exactly at that time.  It can mean around that time, speaking in a general sense of the events being recorded as happening before or after what was just talked about.  In other words, the dinner happened on the sixth day before Passover, before the conspiring which took place two days before Passover, and Matthew and Mark’s interjection of this dinner was to make the connection between those two events as they both centered around Yeshua’s death.

The last thing to note about this whole Bethany and Jerusalem thing is the distance between the two cities.  They were only about an hour to an hour and a half away from each other by foot.  It’s highly likely that Yeshua and the disciples stayed in Bethany from the 9th until the 14th and walked between the two cities as necessary to do whatever they needed to do at each location.  Jerusalem was full of people for the feast, and probably didn’t have any room for them to stay, so they stayed with Lazarus, who we already know was a friend.

Then we come to some even harder statements in the gospels.  We see, in all gospels but John’s, what seems to be the disciples asking Yeshua about preparing Passover on the day which the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed (the 14th of Aviv) (Matthew 26:17, Mark 14:12, Luke 22:7-8).  While it is possible to use some less common translations for certain Greek words in these gospel accounts that would show the writers were actually referring to the 13th of Aviv, I believe based on the Hebrew versions of these gospels that the translators to Greek mistranslated those words.  For example, where the Greek gospels state “first,” as in the first day of Unleavened Bread, the Hebrew word used, in context, meant “former,” or “before.”

Reading the Hebrew versions of these gospels shows that the disciples asked Yeshua about preparing for Passover on the 13th, and when you think about all the things that would be required for Passover and Unleavened Bread, it makes sense that they would do this the day before the 14th rather than on the 14th itself.  Before the evening of the 14th, or the beginning of the 15th as it were, they had to find a place to have the meal that would have enough room for all of them, prepare the place for the meal, which included ensuring there was no leaven in the establishment, make unleavened bread (or buy it), slaughter the lamb, roast it over the fire, prepare the meal, and then they could consume it at twilight.  It just makes sense that rather than try to do all those things on the 14th they would find the place to have the meal and prepare that place for Passover on the 13th.

The other thing to recognize is that Yeshua knew all along what would happen on the 14th.  Namely, that the disciples would not be able to do anything, really, because He was to be betrayed and crucified on that day.  Their day would be all but fully consumed by these events.  

It’s clear from the accounts of the conspiring of the chief priests that they did not want the arrest of Yeshua and His crucifixion to occur during the feast (i.e. from the 15th to the 21st of Aviv) (Matthew 26:5, Mark 14:2).  This is another reason why we know Yeshua’s last meal with His disciples was not the Passover.  If they were eating the Passover, it would have already been the 15th when He was betrayed and hung on the cross, and that was the first day of Unleavened Bread.  Meaning, the chief priests would have arrested and crucified Him on the exact day they wanted to avoid doing so.

When we put all these pieces together, it’s clear that Yeshua’s last meal with His disciples was not the Passover meal, but rather a supper that occurred at the beginning of the 14th of Aviv.  They came together on the evening of the 13th, and ate during the transition to the 14th.  Directly after this meal, they went to the garden where Yeshua was betrayed and arrested, taken to the high priest to answer for His “crimes,” and then as the 14th transitioned to daylight and into morning He was handed over to Pilate for crucifixion. Yeshua was killed on the exact day the Passover lamb was commanded to be killed, and some say even at the exact same hour.      

He really is our Passover Lamb, as Paul stated (1 Corinthians 5:7), and Paul continues by saying because of this, we should keep that feast, meaning the Feast of Passover (1 Corinthians 5:8).  He fulfilled the requirements of being that Lamb according to YHWH’s instruction.  So, why do many, including myself for a time, want to connect the last meal of Yeshua with the Passover?

I can only speak from my own situation regarding this question, and I believe it’s a combination of two things.  First, I desired to have an explanation for this meal that has become such an integral ritual in Christianity today. And second, I subconsciously wanted to have another meaningful reason as to why the Feasts of YHWH are still applicable to us today.  Obviously, for the latter, as we’ve seen in our connecting Yeshua to the Passover commandments, there’s no need to have another reason.  Commemorating His sacrifice by observing Passover is reason enough.

For the former, now that these two events, the Passover and the last supper, are forever separated in my mind, I’m once again left to determine why and how the communion ritual has become such a required element of Christianity that it’s essentially heresy to not observe it.  Despite the fact that this event is commanded nowhere in YHWH’s instruction, it has transitioned into the equivalent of a commandment for much of Christianity today.  Most likely, it is because of what Yeshua said during that meal and what Paul connected those statements to in his first letter to the believers in Corinth, but do you know where the term “Lord’s Supper” even came from?

This phrase occurs exactly once in scripture, in that same letter of Paul, and in fact, the Greek word for “Lord’s” (the possessive of Lord) only even occurs twice in scripture.  Once in Paul’s letter and once in Revelation (Revelation 1:10).  Not coincidentally, that use in Revelation is also another phrase used by Christianity today to justify calling Sunday the new Shabbat.    

The point is, that for such a massively pervasive Christian ceremony like communion, or the Lord’s Supper, to have stemmed from only one occurrence of the phrase in all of scripture is quite astonishing.  Given the fact that by two or three witnesses all things shall be established (2 Corinthians 13:1, Deuteronomy 19:15), we should be wary of creating such a ritual or belief from only one verse in scripture.  Many a false belief has been created by being hinged on only one verse of scripture!  

To that end, it’s important we determine what the Lord’s last meal was and what it wasn’t.  It certainly was a last opportunity to share a meal with the people He held most dear, and subsequently attempt, one last time, to teach them what He came to do and help them understand what they were going to see, especially in that day, on the 14th of Aviv when He would be killed.  He very much desired to eat the upcoming Passover with His disciples (Luke 22:15), but knew that He would be unable to, so He did the next best thing.  He had a meal with them before He would be arrested and crucified.

What Yeshua’s last meal was not is the institution of a new commandment or a new feast.  To institute a new commandment, such as a new feast, would be contrary to Torah (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32), and to preach something contrary to Torah would prove Yeshua to be a false prophet (Isaiah 8:19-20, Deuteronomy 18:20).  Yes, He used the word covenant when speaking of the wine, but we’ve identified previously that some manuscripts and translations have added the word “new” to the word covenant.  We supposed that the reason some manuscripts contain “new” and some don’t is based on the primary audience to which the gospel or letter was written.

Regardless of that, this was the last opportunity for Yeshua to connect all the things He talked about in His ministry with the disciples by His side to what He was about to go through.  From references to new wine in His parables, to calling Himself the bread of life, to the vineyard owner’s son being beaten and killed, Yeshua was making a last attempt to get them to understand everything He taught and how it connected to what would happen in that Passover and beyond.  We know that the disciples struggled all along to understand what He was teaching.  Rather than give up and leave though, they all stayed with Him in faith.

Even after this meal, despite Yeshua’s attempt to get them to connect the dots, the disciples still failed to understand!  Peter asked Him, “Where are you going?” (John 13:36 https://biblehub.com/bsb/john/13.htm#36)  The women went to anoint His body after He had already risen as He prophesied (Mark 16:1).  Even after His body was found to be missing from the tomb, the disciples thought He turned out to be a false prophet rather than the Son of YHWH and their Messiah (Luke 23:15-48), and one even refused to believe unless he could physically touch His resurrected body (John 20:24-29).  

Rather than instituting a new ceremony, Yeshua was connecting the bread to His body, which would be crucified that day, and connecting the wine to His blood.  While the disciples still didn’t quite understand it, Yeshua was saying that His blood would be spilled that day as a sacrifice for many.  If He’s still just connecting His death to Passover, why the “do this in remembrance of me” language?  And if He wasn’t instituting a new ceremony, what does Paul mean when He says “Lord’s supper?”

As we’ve learned time and time again, and as is especially important when it comes to figuring out Paul’s writings, you have to understand the context of what Paul is talking about in the moment in order to know why he’s including the seemingly random pieces of information that he does.  Sometimes, for sure, he transitions to a different topic, but many times he’s simply using a concept to try and help the reader understand where he’s coming from.  In this case, he started out by talking about having divisions among their assembly, and to support his point, he brings up something he called the Lord’s supper (1 Corinthians 11:17-20).

Once he uses that phrase, he starts talking about each person looking out for himself and eating his own food (1 Corinthians 11:21-22).  Everyone is bringing their own items, whether food or wine, and eating them at the same time during these meals, and his point is that the whole reason they should be getting together and eating is not to eat their own stuff but to share what each other has so that everyone can have some.  Their assembly was so divided that they lacked the unity, or more importantly the love for one another, that Yeshua commanded that His followers should have (John 13:34-35). He’s saying that the Lord’s supper is a meal where everyone comes together in love and harmony and shares what they have so everyone can have something and they all can have fellowship.

After this rebuke is when Paul starts talking about how he had shared with them Yeshua’s words during His last meal with His disciples (1 Corinthians 11:23-32), which not-so-coincidentally is the same time Yeshua gave the disciples the “new” commandment of loving one another.  Paul’s not talking about a ceremony.  If he was talking about a ceremony, then he wouldn’t have gone on after that to talk about waiting for each other to start eating and people eating at home if they are hungry.  The whole context of what he’s talking about is what we would call a potluck dinner today, and by connecting this everyday type of event with Yeshua’s last supper we get a better understanding of what Yeshua was doing and saying at that meal.

There was already a feast to commemorate Yeshua’s sacrifice: the Passover.  Every time we observe this feast, we remember what He did and what it means for us today.  Yeshua, at His last meal, was giving the disciples a way to remember what He did more often than once a year.  He was connecting the breaking of bread and drinking of wine while getting together as a body of believers to His sacrifice, so that every time they broke bread together, which scripture tells us they did often, they would remember not only that His sacrifice is why they’re together but also that it’s why they have eternal life.

No, Yeshua’s last meal was not a Passover meal.  Yes, Yeshua was telling us to break bread and drink wine together in remembrance of Him.  No, He was not giving us a ritual to perform monthly, weekly, or otherwise, in church where each person goes up and gets a morsel of bread and a sip of “wine.”  Yes, He was telling us to break bread and drink wine in memory of him as a part of gathering together for meals, sharing with one another, and doing all this in love of one another.

I hope this week’s study was a blessing to you and helped you to better understand what happened during the last two days of Yeshua’s mortal life, and the meaning of it, in light of the upcoming feast!  I know I learned a lot when looking into it!  We hope you have a great week!  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!  

-Rob and Sara Gene

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The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life

(1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)